Taylorcraft tangles with power lines

What reportedly happened: The pilot was attempting to land on an unimproved airstrip he had previously used. When the field was previously used as an airstrip, the power lines were buried, but at the time of the accident the power line were now above ground and were not marked.

The airplane collided with the power lines during the approach.

The surviving passenger stated that he never saw the power lines before the airplane collided with them.

The pilot’s medical records revealed diagnoses of hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, and bipolar disease. Toxicology testing showed the presence of medications consistent with the treatment of these conditions.

Although the pilot’s medical records and toxicology results indicated that the pilot had recently stopped taking some medications that could have adversely affected his performance, his bipolar disease would have had significant negative effects on cognition, including memory and executive functioning/judgment, and would have been disqualifying for a medical certification. Therefore, although it is possible that the pilot’s underlying psychiatric disease and its treatment may have affected his judgment, it is not possible to determine the extent to which it may have contributed to the accident.

Probable cause: The pilot’s failure to monitor, recognize, and identify obstacles on approach to landing, which resulted in an inadvertent collision with power lines. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s expectation and assumption that there were no above-ground power lines in the area.

Someone unburied the power lines at the approach end of an airstrip and didn’t mark them, and the cause of the crash is that the pilot failed to know this. Seems like there’s enough blame to go around, not just lay at the feet of the pilot.

Your comment is interesting in that we had a local grass runway (private) where the owner was going through a fight with the city because they wanted it closed. Since they couldn’t they unburried power lines at the approach end and placed them in poles. The owner still used his strip because it was long and his plane could handle but it goes to show that some people will do things like that to achieve their agenda but with utter disregard to the lives of others.